All I want to do is talk about COMC - Page 249

Bowman1951 · 01-10-2019, 07:53 AM

OMG, it's a January miracle! I had my first eBay sale of the year overnight.

2015 Bowman's Best - Top Prospects - Refractor #TP-37

Andrew Benintendi [edit] [share]

Item: 39414971
Get SRP
Purchase Price $0.98
Sale Price $1.74
COMC Credit $1.65

1/9/2019 11/23/2018 eBay

shrevecity · 01-10-2019, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

OMG, it's a January miracle! I had my first eBay sale of the year overnight.

2015 Bowman's Best - Top Prospects - Refractor #TP-37

Andrew Benintendi [edit] [share]

Item: 39414971
Get SRP
Purchase Price $0.98
Sale Price $1.74
COMC Credit $1.65

1/9/2019 11/23/2018 eBay

I should hit my 100th item this month today. Am at 93 for the month which is right on pace for my monthly averages.

MFM · 01-10-2019, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

OMG, it's a January miracle! I had my first eBay sale of the year overnight.

2015 Bowman's Best - Top Prospects - Refractor #TP-37

Andrew Benintendi [edit] [share]

Item: 39414971
Get SRP
Purchase Price $0.98
Sale Price $1.74
COMC Credit $1.65

1/9/2019 11/23/2018 eBay

I had a lot of low-end Benintendi cards sell on eBay overnight also. I think eight of the same card. Glad about it.

MFM · 01-10-2019, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thebrett

The recent changes were supposed to drive prices down, but I’ve never had a harder time finding things to buy for flips

Are people washing their legacy credit and gobbling up all the deals?

With all the negativity and uncertainty I would expect ports being dumped, big sales etc.... I’m not seeing it

The recent changes caused me to lower prices on just about everything. The exception is I left a lot of prices untouched on cards I have the only copy of on-site. Though I'll start getting into lowering those soon, or at least assessing their accuracy/fairness.

Leading up to 1/1, I went through everything subject to storage fees to make sure I was the lowest on site, with few exceptions (like cards I expect to increase soon). This also helped me find some things to drop down to $.74 to avoid the storage fee. Since the new year, I went through all my low end stuff ($.74 and less) to do the same assessment and lowering. And the usual low-end vultures have grabbed a lot of those already. This week I moved a lot of stuff down to $4.74 or less, for the eBay side of things.

Interspersed with all that, I lowered prices on some of my high-end, or in most cases, marked it to ship back to myself.

MFM · 01-10-2019, 08:33 AM

Also, if my current pace continues, this will be my first month ever as a seller on COMC where my average selling price is less than $1 per card (I'm at 1,116 cards sold for $999 right now).

shrevecity · 01-10-2019, 08:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MFM

Also, if my current pace continues, this will be my first month ever as a seller on COMC where my average selling price is less than $1 per card (I'm at 1,116 cards sold for $999 right now).

I am close to that as well. 93 cards and 101.00. It happens though for me about 80% of my cards are 1.50 or less.

peterose4hof · 01-10-2019, 10:05 AM

I'm on pace to match my January 2018 sales which is not good because my month-over-month sales have been way up the past year.

Changes I have made... Lowered most of my $5-7 cards down top $4.74. Lowered many $1.00ish cards down to .75. Lowered prices on much of my inventory in general.

Echoing what others have said, my eBay/Amazon/COMC Guest sales are down so far this year, albeit a small sample size.

tyrodsports · 01-10-2019, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peterose4hof

I'm on pace to match my January 2018 sales which is not good because my month-over-month sales have been way up the past year.

Changes I have made... Lowered most of my $5-7 cards down top $4.74. Lowered many $1.00ish cards down to .75. Lowered prices on much of my inventory in general.

Echoing what others have said, my eBay/Amazon/COMC Guest sales are down so far this year, albeit a small sample size.

Nice prices-just picked something up. Thank you

Bowman1951 · 01-10-2019, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MFM

I had a lot of low-end Benintendi cards sell on eBay overnight also. I think eight of the same card. Glad about it.

That HAD TO be the same buyer on all.

I'm still confused, can buyers combine shipping after the fact from COMC's eBay account?

scotthenrichs · 01-10-2019, 10:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MFM

Leading up to 1/1, I went through everything subject to storage fees to make sure I was the lowest on site, with few exceptions (like cards I expect to increase soon). This also helped me find some things to drop down to $.74 to avoid the storage fee. Since the new year, I went through all my low end stuff ($.74 and less) to do the same assessment and lowering. And the usual low-end vultures have grabbed a lot of those already. This week I moved a lot of stuff down to $4.74 or less, for the eBay side of things.

FYI, .75 will get you under the storage fee threshold. (in case you want that extra cent

)

peterose4hof · 01-10-2019, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyrodsports

Nice prices-just picked something up. Thank you

Thanks!

So what's everyone's strategy for auto-accept % now? 20% used to make sense when the eBay/Amazon 20% off was in affect.

thebrett · 01-10-2019, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peterose4hof

Thanks!

So what's everyone's strategy for auto-accept % now? 20% used to make sense when the eBay/Amazon 20% off was in affect.

I run a 15% Sale and have 16% auto accept I think

I’ve lowered tens of thousands of prices over the past month and sales have been good enough.

eBay and Amazon are down, but anything else would make no sense to me

I’m strongly considering starting to draw some funds off the site to fade my exposure

Swipe79 · 01-10-2019, 11:55 AM

I reduced all of my cards 20-25% on January 1st, so I turned off the auto-accept for now. Still adjusting to the new stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peterose4hof

Thanks!

So what's everyone's strategy for auto-accept % now? 20% used to make sense when the eBay/Amazon 20% off was in affect.

ih8ca · 01-10-2019, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swipe79

I reduced all of my cards 20-25% on January 1st, so I turned off the auto-accept for now. Still adjusting to the new stuff.

Just bought a few off you thanks

Swipe79 · 01-10-2019, 12:39 PM

Thanks to you! I'm sure most of that will be spent back with you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ih8ca

Just bought a few off you thanks

ga5150 · 01-10-2019, 12:52 PM

I lowered a lot of cards around the $1 mark to .74 before the end of the year. For the higher priced cards, I used inventory manager and started at my highest priced cards and started lowering to try to be somewhat competitive on Ebay.

After fully digesting all of the changes after having many questions with board members and staff and then fully reading the TOS, I was on the fence for what to do. I was okay with the 5% transaction fee, but seeing the cards marked so far insanely high on Ebay, coupled with the staffs unequaled ability to dance around questions and delay any important responses, drove me to the decision to liquidate my entire port.

I am currently at 70% off and having a great month (although Ebay sales are still pretty much non-existent). Edit to add- I do see quite a few COMC Guest purchases, so that is interesting.

Once the port is gone, I think I will sit back and watch and let things shake out as they may. When I feel more confident about the state of things, I may re-enter the game, as I really enjoyed being on the site. Until that time, I'll take a hiatus once the port is gone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peterose4hof

I'm on pace to match my January 2018 sales which is not good because my month-over-month sales have been way up the past year.

Changes I have made... Lowered most of my $5-7 cards down top $4.74. Lowered many $1.00ish cards down to .75. Lowered prices on much of my inventory in general.

Echoing what others have said, my eBay/Amazon/COMC Guest sales are down so far this year, albeit a small sample size.

Bowman1951 · 01-10-2019, 01:01 PM

If anyone else wasn't aware, you need to accept Cookies on the website.

Swipe79 · 01-10-2019, 01:02 PM

I don't know if anyone has posted the threshold but I thought I would share - if it's over $200 it gets signature confirmation.

This is an e-mail response asking if they could place a note on my account to not have signature confirmation.

"Unfortunately, no, there is no way to currently flag an account to never have signature confirmation. The best suggestion I can offer is to ensure that the to value of any shipment you request is below $200.00, as that is the threshold that triggers signature confirmation."

ga5150 · 01-10-2019, 01:02 PM

I keep seeing that little box/window at the bottom of my screen but I just ignore it. Does it make a difference one way or the other for clicking it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

If anyone else wasn't aware, you need to accept Cookies on the website.

lunderk · 01-10-2019, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

If anyone else wasn't aware, you need to accept Cookies on the website.

Are you sure?

Does that prevent it from popping up next time? Even cookie monster would be full by now

Bowman1951 · 01-10-2019, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lunderk

Are you sure?

Does that prevent it from popping up next time? Even cookie monster would be full by now

If you watch this forever it pretty much mimics what is happening on the COMC site.

VintageVinny · 01-10-2019, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

If you watch this forever it pretty much mimics what is happening on the COMC site.

That's Fee Collection Room #5. It is right between the epack printing press and the cafeteria.

ih8ca · 01-10-2019, 11:21 PM

What is a fair percentage of net fees to pay comc from shipment to receiving a check in the mail? This includes shipment of items to comc,listing fees, storage fees, transactions fees and cash out fees. I realize that flippers and traders are going to have different values. Keep in mind this is a non auction venue where the sell through rates and not going to be as good and you are in control of the pricing, how long you want to wait, offers, having inventory sent back to you. Most consignment places frown appon holding inventory long or shipping it back.

VintageVinny · 01-11-2019, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ih8ca

What is a fair percentage of net fees to pay comc from shipment to receiving a check in the mail? This includes shipment of items to comc,listing fees, storage fees, transactions fees and cash out fees. I realize that flippers and traders are going to have different values. Keep in mind this is a non auction venue where the sell through rates and not going to be as good and you are in control of the pricing, how long you want to wait, offers, having inventory sent back to you. Most consignment places frown appon holding inventory long or shipping it back.

COMC is a different animal entirely as they historically publicly encouraged flipping and hold and ship later. This was their 'angle' even. So maybe now they decided they don't want to hold items but...man...if so then I am a confused cosigner. I know you get all that hawk, you are well on top of all this. I think originally they needed cards cards cards so low fees and kind of looked to build up the gravity of planet COMC so to speak. But then there is the here and now. They should look after their user community. Talking to a few big consigners about changes may not have accurrately represented their user community as a whole. They over-thought all this. If you don't want low end then just make it more expensive to place cards. Case closed, problem solved. But if you want to encourage high end then my God don't increase fees on those. All the other big players have diminishing fees as you go up the food chain. That was where my direction was going was high value cards. But man these changes and more importantly the lack of communication is pretty shocking. It scares the daylights out of me as far as continuing to scale up with them.

checkoutmydeals · 01-11-2019, 11:36 AM

What is a fair percentage of net fees to pay comc from shipment to receiving a check in the mail?

IMO, the stated fees that they charge the sellers are reasonable. The hidden fees that they charge the retail buyers vary from annoying to outrageous.

There's a prominent comic book dealer in my area who will consign higher quality comic books at 50% consignment. You tell him you want $100 for a comic, and he'll agree that if he sells it for $200, you'll get the $100.

But then, he'll jack the comic up to $300 or $400. And if it sells, he'll give you the $100 because that's what you said you wanted.

If you protest by saying that what you wanted was 50% of the sale price, he'll give you some song and dance that's too cute by half and let you know that you can take your stuff back at any time.

The practice is annoying, obnoxious, and the reason that no serious collector will ever consign with the guy twice. I could have done hundreds of thousands in business with him over the years. It's possible I would have never even have opened my own brick and mortar store in the 1990's if this guy just stuck to the 50/50 consignment deal.

When COMC does things like add $3.99 in "free" shipping to $5 eBay items, or when they charge an extra 15% to COMC_Guest customers, or when they force COMC_Guest customers to pay 25 cents per card extra for Expedited Shipping, or when they add the handling fee to the item and THEN put 15% on top of that, it leaves the same bad taste in my mouth that this comic store owner does.

At the very least, if COMC is jacking up my price, they should give me some additional benefit. Ideally, if they're selling my $5 card for $8.99, they should treat it like an $8.99 card when it sells. Give me $8.54, the way they would if I had priced it at $8.99 myself.

Alternately, they could give me some free listing credits or some free shipping credits or some free storage fee credits or some free enhanced listing fee credits.

Alternately, they could allow me to opt out of having "free shipping" added to my eBay items.

But other than those minor tweaks, I'm liking the new fee structure quite a bit. For years, the incentive was to use credit to buy cards, either to flip or to take physical delivery, and never cash out. Now, I'm indifferent as to whether $300 in my account is used to process 1,000 cards, or take physical delivery of 1200 cards, or to spend $300 on items and take delivery, or to spend $300 on items to try to flip.

I think that's a good thing, and I'm glad that COMC will get a little bit of benefit no matter which option I choose.

Under the old system, where COMC would get $60 if I cash out, or $0 if I bought to flip, our interests were not aligned.

I feel that the new fee structure aligns our interests. COMC should now be indifferent whether I buy to flip or whether I buy to take physical delivery or whether I cash out.

However, the $3.99 "free" shipping throws a monkey wrench into this. A person selling $5 items could have their sales drop by 80%, yet COMC could make as much or more than they would have previously. I think they went a bridge too far on that fee, and they should either end the practice immediately, or allow sellers to opt out of "free" embedded shipping on their listings, or cut the sellers in for a piece of the take.

01-10-2019, 08:33 AM	#6205
MFM Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Detroit-ish, MI Posts: 1,225 mfmcnabb	Also, if my current pace continues, this will be my first month ever as a seller on COMC where my average selling price is less than $1 per card (I'm at 1,116 cards sold for $999 right now). __________________ -- I collect former Wichita State basketball and baseball players and Chris Douglas-Roberts. I'm always looking to make sales through COMC. Make bulk offers on what you like. Link is to the left. Or PM me to negotiate.

01-10-2019, 01:02 PM	#6218
Swipe79 Member Join Date: May 2010 Location: Vancouver, WA Posts: 13,161 Swipe79 XFactor	I don't know if anyone has posted the threshold but I thought I would share - if it's over $200 it gets signature confirmation. This is an e-mail response asking if they could place a note on my account to not have signature confirmation. "Unfortunately, no, there is no way to currently flag an account to never have signature confirmation. The best suggestion I can offer is to ensure that the to value of any shipment you request is below $200.00, as that is the threshold that triggers signature confirmation." __________________ Have a nice day!

01-10-2019, 07:53 AM	#6201
Bowman1951 Member Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: Boston 'Burbs Posts: 4,717 djblitz Bowman1951	OMG, it's a January miracle! I had my first eBay sale of the year overnight. 2015 Bowman's Best - Top Prospects - Refractor #TP-37 Andrew Benintendi [edit] [share] Item: 39414971 Get SRP Purchase Price $0.98 Sale Price $1.74 COMC Credit $1.65 1/9/2019 11/23/2018 eBay

01-10-2019, 10:05 AM	#6207
peterose4hof Member Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 5,332 peterose4hof	I'm on pace to match my January 2018 sales which is not good because my month-over-month sales have been way up the past year. Changes I have made... Lowered most of my $5-7 cards down top $4.74. Lowered many $1.00ish cards down to .75. Lowered prices on much of my inventory in general. Echoing what others have said, my eBay/Amazon/COMC Guest sales are down so far this year, albeit a small sample size.

01-10-2019, 01:01 PM	#6217
Bowman1951 Member Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: Boston 'Burbs Posts: 4,717 djblitz Bowman1951	If anyone else wasn't aware, you need to accept Cookies on the website.

01-10-2019, 11:21 PM	#6223
ih8ca Member Join Date: Dec 2017 Location: OC Posts: 844 card-buyer hawkdynasty	What is a fair percentage of net fees to pay comc from shipment to receiving a check in the mail? This includes shipment of items to comc,listing fees, storage fees, transactions fees and cash out fees. I realize that flippers and traders are going to have different values. Keep in mind this is a non auction venue where the sell through rates and not going to be as good and you are in control of the pricing, how long you want to wait, offers, having inventory sent back to you. Most consignment places frown appon holding inventory long or shipping it back.

01-11-2019, 11:36 AM	#6225
checkoutmydeals Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: USA Posts: 3,040 king-collect checkoutmydeals	What is a fair percentage of net fees to pay comc from shipment to receiving a check in the mail? IMO, the stated fees that they charge the sellers are reasonable. The hidden fees that they charge the retail buyers vary from annoying to outrageous. There's a prominent comic book dealer in my area who will consign higher quality comic books at 50% consignment. You tell him you want $100 for a comic, and he'll agree that if he sells it for $200, you'll get the $100. But then, he'll jack the comic up to $300 or $400. And if it sells, he'll give you the $100 because that's what you said you wanted. If you protest by saying that what you wanted was 50% of the sale price, he'll give you some song and dance that's too cute by half and let you know that you can take your stuff back at any time. The practice is annoying, obnoxious, and the reason that no serious collector will ever consign with the guy twice. I could have done hundreds of thousands in business with him over the years. It's possible I would have never even have opened my own brick and mortar store in the 1990's if this guy just stuck to the 50/50 consignment deal. When COMC does things like add $3.99 in "free" shipping to $5 eBay items, or when they charge an extra 15% to COMC_Guest customers, or when they force COMC_Guest customers to pay 25 cents per card extra for Expedited Shipping, or when they add the handling fee to the item and THEN put 15% on top of that, it leaves the same bad taste in my mouth that this comic store owner does. At the very least, if COMC is jacking up my price, they should give me some additional benefit. Ideally, if they're selling my $5 card for $8.99, they should treat it like an $8.99 card when it sells. Give me $8.54, the way they would if I had priced it at $8.99 myself. Alternately, they could give me some free listing credits or some free shipping credits or some free storage fee credits or some free enhanced listing fee credits. Alternately, they could allow me to opt out of having "free shipping" added to my eBay items. But other than those minor tweaks, I'm liking the new fee structure quite a bit. For years, the incentive was to use credit to buy cards, either to flip or to take physical delivery, and never cash out. Now, I'm indifferent as to whether $300 in my account is used to process 1,000 cards, or take physical delivery of 1200 cards, or to spend $300 on items and take delivery, or to spend $300 on items to try to flip. I think that's a good thing, and I'm glad that COMC will get a little bit of benefit no matter which option I choose. Under the old system, where COMC would get $60 if I cash out, or $0 if I bought to flip, our interests were not aligned. I feel that the new fee structure aligns our interests. COMC should now be indifferent whether I buy to flip or whether I buy to take physical delivery or whether I cash out. However, the $3.99 "free" shipping throws a monkey wrench into this. A person selling $5 items could have their sales drop by 80%, yet COMC could make as much or more than they would have previously. I think they went a bridge too far on that fee, and they should either end the practice immediately, or allow sellers to opt out of "free" embedded shipping on their listings, or cut the sellers in for a piece of the take.